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How the 1930s Echo in Today’s Politics

A rebellion against the existing order, a rise in nationalism and a retreat from international entanglements. Today’s tensions sound like the 1930s.

The rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, along with their populist rhetoric, are reminiscent of the 1930s when voices on the far right and left began to resonate with American voters. WSJ's Gerald F. Seib explains what this means for the 2016 presidential election. Photo: AP

Lingering economic anger and anxiety. A rebellion against the existing political order. A rise of nationalism and a retreat from international entanglements.

After last week’s “Brexit” vote in Britain, and amid a tumultuous U.S. presidential campaign, that sounds like a description of the political lay of the land in 2016. In fact, it’s a description of global sentiment in the 1930s, which increasingly looks like the best parallel to today’s environment.

The political ferment of the 1930s led to cataclysmic consequences, of course, and there’s little reason to think that’s where things are heading today. Still, the parallels are close enough to suggest that nobody should be surprised that a sustained period of economic anxiety and anger would lead to a flirtation with unorthodox, perhaps even radical, political experiments. A look back suggests that mainstream politicians ignore the underlying sentiments at their own risk.

President Roosevelt faced political and economic pressures that reverberate in recent events.
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The lesson of 2016 so far is that wounds and resentments from the deep recession that began in 2007 and the financial collapse of 2008 remain painful enough that they have compelled voters across the industrialized world to make choices that once would have seemed implausible. Some 13 million voted for Donald Trump in the primary season, and 12 million for Sen. Bernie Sanders. Both were marginal figures before this year, and their messages once would have been considered well out of the mainstream.

In Europe, parties of the socialist left and nationalist right are enjoying bursts of popularity and, in some cases, actual power. In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sounds nationalistic notes not heard in more than half a century. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is thriving by reviving his nation’s nationalist sentiment. And in Britain, those who have spent years grousing about ending ties to the European Union suddenly got their hearing—and a shocking victory.

In all these developments, there are echoes of the 1930s. The economic event that touched off that decade’s political tremors was, of course, the Great Depression, a jolt considerably worse than the recent recession.

Then as now, it took years for the political repercussions to play out. The first impact came when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt buried Herbert Hoover in the election of 1932 and roared into the White House with what seemed to some a radical economic prescription for pulling out of the Depression ditch.

But throughout the decade, voters also flirted with even less-conventional figures and ideas. On the left, the Progressive Party created by Robert La Follette took hold in Wisconsin. Upton Sinclair, an avowed socialist not unlike Bernie Sanders, won the Democratic nomination for governor of California in 1934.

Populism took root as well. Huey Long, a figure with distinct similarities to Mr. Trump, became Louisiana’s governor and, ultimately, a national figure with presidential notions. Henry Wallace’s version of agricultural populism was appealing enough that he became vice president.

Harsher voices were heard as well. Father Charles E. Coughlin found that the new-media innovation of the day, a national radio network, was a perfect platform for dispersing a populist and xenophobic message, and his National Union for Social Justice became a national force.

Amid the economic distress at home, calls to retreat from the world stage took on new appeal. The sentiment actually was codified in Congress, in the form of the Neutrality Act of 1935. Pacifism became a campus fad.

The convulsions in Europe were bigger, of course. Fascists rose in Germany and Italy, and found they had cheerleaders scattered across the West, including in the U.S. Great Britain tried to avoid getting entangled in the continent’s affairs, with disastrous consequences. Leaders in Moscow, meanwhile, stepped in.

Obviously, the parallels between then and now are far from exact. Most notably, today’s political churning isn’t accompanied by a parallel rise in militarism. In his history of the period, “The Glory and the Dream,” William Manchester summarized the effects of the combination of extreme nationalism and militarism:

With the possible exception of Mr. Putin taking Crimea away from Ukraine, nothing remotely like that scenario is developing today.

But for political leaders, the one takeaway is quite relevant. Public sentiments of anger and alienation aren’t to be belittled or dismissed, for their causes can be legitimate and their consequences powerful.

That, ultimately, is what Mr. Roosevelt did in steering between the more extreme sentiments of left and right that were coursing around him. He showed that a conventional politician could survive and prosper—not by dismissing the seemingly illogical emotions around him but by channeling them.